


Be Where You Are

by smolhombre



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Graphic Descriptions of Feelings, Moderately Paced Simmer, Slow Burn, Somewhat Healthy Relationships, Tender loving care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 11:26:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8531224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: If it's stasis or free-fall, Karen is absolutely fine with it.
She has to learn to live again, after her article on Heroes in Hell's Kitchen grants her D-List stardom in seven blocks of the city and she drops her past like a bad penny -- like she's done often enough before.





	

Trish Walker sends her home with a white gift bag filled with cranberry-orange wax melts, a sage green Trish Talk mug, and a handful of Hershey Kisses.

“Thanks again,” She says softly, though her mic is off and swiveled away from her face during the commercial break. “We’re gonna wrap up in fifteen if you want to wait here or in the lobby.”

“I’ve got a call to make anyway, so I’ll meet you out there.”

Trish’s executive producer knocks on the glass, and Karen drags the gift bag to her and exits her cushy chair and the padded room as quietly as she’s able.

Her phone feels impossibly heavy in her hand with the influx of voicemails and texts -- she’d had to disconnect her e-mail from the thing two and a half weeks ago when it started waking her up at all hours of the night with interview requests and “tip offs.”

She only half-cares about two of them. Foggy has sent her a few strings of emojis, apparently live-texting her his reactions to the interview. Ellison has left her what he probably considers to be an encouraging text, followed immediately by a meeting time that started ten minutes ago. (“No one gets out of staff meetings, your highness.”) She huffs as she taps out her reply -- “I’ll be there when I get there” -- before stopping short as a notification banner pops up announcing a new text.

The number is always different, though she saves all of them even knowing calling it after a day will leave her ringing a trash can on 43rd. But the message is always the same.

“Call me.”

Ellison has texted her back, but she hardly reads it. The bathroom is miles away, and the curly-haired receptionist must think she’s in dire digestive duress by the speed of her sprint towards it.

He picks up on the first ring.

“Ma’am.”

“Frank,” she breathes, locking the door behind her and leaning her weight against it.

The sound of his breathing over the phone and under the automatic overhead vent in the restroom is a cool drink of water, an aching joint popping back into its rightful socket. It’s always like this, too; the beats of silence after their greeting a part of the ritual she couldn’t bear to skip. It’s a terrible wait and weight both, to imagine the possibilities, to think about what is wrong today; but in the few silent breaths between them she can convince herself he’s alive enough for her now.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a celebrity before.”

“Tell me you’re okay.”

“Karen.”

“Don’t act like I’m an idiot for asking,” she snaps.

“I only wanted to...congratulate you.” He finishes lamely, like that wasn’t what he wanted to do at all.

“This isn’t 60 Minutes, I’ve given interviews before.”

“It’s alright to feel good about it.”

Karen brings her head back on the door with a thunk.

“What do you feel good about, Frank?” It’s not suggestive, mostly tired. But it crosses a line they keep -- where they draw it changes daily, but they know it exists somewhere. This early on a Wednesday morning it’s in the shallow end of the pool, ankle deep where they usually wade waist high.

“I don’t want to keep you from your fans,” he finally says.

“I want you to be careful.”

He exhales sharply, and she hears him take a big gulp of the disgusting black coffee that keeps him on his feet. “You saw that shit with Mariah Dillard and that Harlem rally. They are looking for people with abilities; the police are looking for reasons to -- ”

“Ma’am, please.”

She knows he’s pinching the bridge of his curved nose, probably looking out into a busy street or on a pier like some brooding asshole.

“Tell Red I said hello.” He says finally, and she imagines what garbage will cover this burner and if he can be bothered to hang up or let her know first before he tosses it; he hasn’t always done so. Maybe he’ll throw it off the pier and she can listen to the bubbles and static long enough to act like this phone call never happened when she goes back out to see Trish. To convince herself it’s just a dream.

“You’ll see him before me.”

She clicks off the same time he does, she’s pretty sure, thank god. There’s a tube of hand cream in her bag, some lavender mint gimmick that she rubs in roughly before inhaling the crisp smell of it. If it’s supposed to calm her down it doesn’t really work, but she knew she was wasting the seven dollars when she bought it.

Trish is smiling at her pleasantly when she finally exits the bathroom, her sweater a soft blue that makes the seafoam color of her eyes bright, the mid morning light sweet through the window behind her keeping them clear as sea glass.

“Thank you for coming. I know you’ve been busy.”

“No, anytime. I’ve listened to you for a while, I’m glad you asked me on.”

“It’s an open invitation,” she says seriously as they shake hands, the smile on her face dropping into something serious. Karen doesn’t want to understand it.

She calls Foggy halfway back to the Bulletin, and it improves her mood more than the hand cream. Karen loves Foggy in the most uncomplicated way she thinks love could ever be, trusts him to love her the same.

“I told you I wouldn’t let you struggle with them alone, I’ll be there.”

“Pinkie swear me, Karen Page.”

“I’ll come to the dumb party, Franklin Nelson.”

It’s been three weeks since she published her article on heroes in Hell’s Kitchen, since Matt had dropped that mask like a nuclear bomb. It’s been two weeks and six days since she dropped him like a bad penny, quarantining herself inside the subsequent radiation poisoning like a shield and ignoring the voicemail he left two weeks and four days ago. The dog and pony show the article caused is the best thing in the world; she doesn’t have to think about it at all to be led around radio and TV stations, looked at as a leggy blonde and nothing else, no expectations.

If it’s stasis or free-fall, Karen is absolutely fine with it.

 

“I need a favor.”

“I don’t think I’m good at those, any more.”

He huffs, and she thinks she knows he is bleeding something awful.

“What do you need?”

“You got some Advil?”

Karen slips her reading glasses off, and her laptop off her curled legs. Her apartment is dark, thrown in blue relief where her computer screen illuminates the shoddy furniture. It’s as quiet as it could be at 11:30 at night in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Where are you, Frank?”

His exhale is a ragged thing, a rusted tin can lid at the soft pulp inside his throat. Two short knocks at her door have her bolting to it, ripping at the deadbolt and her pinkie nail both.

“Get inside,” she hisses, barely resisting the twitch in her arm that wants to use her phone to bludgeon his ridiculous, stupid, high-maintenance --

“‘M’sorry.”

“Off,” she snaps, tugging at the sleeve of his jacket. “And the shirt. Lay down.”

Frank’s face is a swollen, tender purple from his heavy brow to the wide curve of his upper lip in some form of another. Blood dapples his strong chin from a split lower lip, and he limps with his hands pressed over what she thinks is his kidney into her place proper.

“Wait, no. Don’t move, actually.” She peels his layers off and he lets himself be maneuvered. It’s rougher than she has to be, but she doesn’t know where the line is, today. And he did intrude on her Friday night plans. The ones she could have made, anyway.

His jacket is tossed to her right, and she barely brushes the inside of his forearms, the backs of his biceps, with her fingertips as she guides his arms above his head as high as he can manage. Her knuckles brush the coarse hair low on his belly when she yanks the ratty hem of his shirt up.

“What,” she says slowly, her fingers barely starting to curl into the waistband of his jeans, “the _fuck_ ,” she traces the outline of the discoloration low on his side, spanning his hip and mottled red and purple, “have you done?”

Thick as syrup, something lands warm at the side of her index finger. Raising it to her face, it slips between her fingers like honey, slick when the digits rub together. She pops the bent knuckle in her mouth without much thought, looking up to find the source. The tangy copper has to sit on her tongue for a moment before she realizes it’s blood, yanking it from between her lips hard enough she fears some of her teeth may come with it.

“Frank -- ”

Holes litter his chest. Too narrow, too pale.

_No_.

Wesley presses a hand to the small of her back, keeping her close, their bodies slotted together. His Cartier watch is cold and heavy through her blouse, his other hand covering her mouth and nose.

She bites, gnaws, and rips to no effect, screaming at the salty tang of skin and the sweet rot of decay at the roof of her mouth.

Over his shoulder, Matt steps from the shadow of the corner of her kitchen. The red of his mask is somehow painfully fluorescent, though he wears a regular suit and still carries his cane in one hand.

He beats Wesley with it, the back of his skull cracking open like a fruit and spraying her face with the warm pith.

“Thank you,” she gasps when she’s able to shake his weight loose.

Matt tilts his head looking at her, like he can't understand. He drops his cane and steps over Wesley’s body, hands outstretched. They are dry and insistent around her throat when she wakes.

“God _damn_.”

Her sheets feel like snakes writhing at her ankles, trying to keep her on the bed, which is suddenly a very Dangerous Place. Karen kicks them off violently, and the dream shrapnel with it, before stalking to her kitchen like a caged beast.

3:20 a.m., and she didn’t get to bed till well after one. The beep of the microwave behind her leaves her feeling like she should have shattered with it, the tense clench of her spine and neck brittle as old glass. Shattering would have felt nice, she’s sure.

She intended to make tea, but the thought of stomaching anything pisses her off. Why should she have to sip on tea and pace to soothe herself like she’s in an Austen novel? What had she done that was truly wrong? Besides murder.

The bar that half-separates her kitchen area from the main space has a clear view of both the door and the window. She curls up on the floor there, propped up against it, and unlocks her phone. The past two calls have been from the same number, though she didn’t know what that meant.

“Tell me who you killed tonight.”

Frank is the worst texter known to man. His large, blunt fingers made him slower than molasses. She sees the speech bubble bouncing fifty times longer than if it were her on the other end of the line.

God, she hopes he hadn’t thrown this phone out yet.

“What s wrong ??”

“Not what I asked.”

She picks up on the second ring, sighing. He speaks low and urgent before she can even say hello.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Frank exhales like all the air coming out of a balloon at once. “Karen, what -- ”

“Please just tell me?”

It’s silent. She listens to his breathing and is content it doesn't sound too shallow or watery or slow.

“What if I didn’t kill anyone, just tonight?”

“I had a nightmare.” She pauses, fiddling with the hem of her big nightshirt. “What if I needed -- if I…”

“There was a dog fighting ring,” he says gruffly. “Near -- where I’m at, now. I kept hearing the noises. I went there last night. ‘S’why I couldn't call, today. I’ve been...busy.”

“Amazing,” Karen snorts, incredulous. “I’m having night terrors and you’re drowning in puppies. Is there no justice at all in the world?”

“No, ma’am,” he says, a little smugly. There is rustling on the other side of the phone, though it’s mostly silence for a few minutes.

“Tell me about your favorite.”

“How can I pick a favorite?” But Karen thinks that's not actually directed to her at all, the jingling of a collar following his question.

She wakes up the next morning with the sunlight pouring rich orange into her apartment. Her phone is on one percent battery, and there’s a new text message waiting for her. The call log says they were on the phone for twenty six minutes, and the text message is a new number, saying simply “use this.”

 

Karen really likes Marci.

“If you’ll just give me a price range,” she reasons, her courtroom smile firmly in place, the steam from the latte in her manicured hands nuzzling warmly at Karen’s own face. “One year I got him these cuff links, like three weeks worth of my internship salary. Do you know what he got me?”

“I’m afraid to ask,” she says honestly, taking a bite of her poppyseed muffin. Foggy ventured from “clumsily sweet” to “tactless” with a strong breeze.

“These amateur masked wrestling tickets he won off a radio contest for knowing all the birthdays of Earth, Wind, and Fire members in chronological order.”

Marci has to come around the little table and slap her back a few times to dislodge the bits of muffin she chokes on.

“Oh, my god.” Karen wipes the wetness from the corners of her eyes, gasping. “I promise I wouldn’t let him do that to you.”

“Even the sex couldn’t make up for it all the way.”

“I get it, I get it. I’ll see what I can weasel out of him.”

Marci downs the rest of her drink and gives her hand a little pat when she leaves. “You’ll come to the office party, right? He’ll complain about being the only plebeian if you aren’t there.”

She doesn’t mean any offense by that, so Karen doesn’t take any.

“Barring anymore aliens or superheroes in the city I should be able to pencil you in.”

“You’re the _best_. Bye!”

Karen still has half her drink left, and is more than happy to tune out the hum of the coffee shop around her and watch the snow fall. Fat flakes pile up on the cars parallel parked in front, close enough she imagines hearing the barely-there crisp sound they make on top of each other.

“If it ain’t the best there is,” Frank says by way of greeting. Karen is proud of herself for digging her hand into the top of her thigh under the table to keep from screaming, though the claw mark bruises last for days.

He’s grown in a full beard since she saw him last -- and the weeks may well be years ago, by the odd clench sweet and low in her belly -- and his hair into a thick mop with it, poking out erratically from underneath a navy beanie. She’s relieved to see his face free of the swollen bruising her dream showed, more so the little grin he gives her that’s almost shy.

“Are you following me?”

The smile drops from his face, her stomach untwisting itself with it.

“No, ma’am.”

“I just -- ” _Feel like an ass, now_ , her brain supplies unhelpfully. “Of all the coffee shops in all the Boroughs in all of New York, and you walk into mine.”

“Oh, is that what that sign says out there? Thought it read Cup-la Joe’s. I didn’t know you were famous enough to get buildings named after you now.”

“I know a good publicist.”

He raises an eyebrow, bringing his paper cup to his mouth. She looks away from it quickly, clearing her throat.

“Mm. Misery.”

What Karen can’t believe, really, is that anyone’s face could be so soft. Frank’s never bothered with hiding how he’s feeling; wears that truthful, open vulnerability like a mask and a shield both. She’s jealous as much as it terrifies her.

“Are you miserable?”

“I should be asking you that,” she points out, busying herself with her drink.

“Should you?” He doesn’t sound upset so much as honestly curious.

“Ellison was working on a story when I left this morning about that trafficking ring you -- from last night,” Frank frowns now. “It looked ugly. Are you -- should I even…”

“It’s done now,” Frank’s voice is gravel that drags like tomcat’s claws up her spine. She resolutely doesn’t arch into it. “Ain’t nothing for you to worry about.”

A pause.

It’s different since she called him with her nightmare, but she hasn’t figured out how yet. What is she supposed to say to that? I mean there’s lots I shouldn’t be doing, but here we are.

“I thought Red would have shown his ugly mug.”

“Why would he have?”

“Coulda sworn I fought some ninjas last night. Straight Karate Kid types. That’s not up his alley?”

“Maybe he’s dead, Frank.” Karen is pretty sure he isn’t, actually. Foggy would know, somehow, and he would tell her. He would know even if he isn’t talking to him, either. He would have to.

“You know he isn't.”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

Frank’s doing the squinty-eyed up and down once over and she knows she’s in for it.

“I think you know enough. You just don’t like people weaker than you.”

  
“It’s her birthday today,” he croaks over the line when he calls her that night. “Ma’am, I did follow you, just today. Just today, I did. I -- ” She hears the silent word “need,” the guilty “want,” though he doesn’t say them, though she doesn’t know or feel ready to know what was supposed to complete the sentence.

“I’m so -- ” _sorry, sorry, sorry._

Frank takes a shaky breath. Karen clamps a hand over her own mouth to block an answering sigh. “I just didn't want to lie to you.”

“I know you don’t. I know, I swear I know.”

 

The party sucks only half as much as she expected. Part of her dour mood is not the fault of the overworked administrative staff that organized Foggy and Marci’s firm’s Christmas party -- the wine here is better than the Aldi’s stuff at her own office’s party two nights prior, and the food, decorations, and soft jazz are all so tasteful it’s maddening -- but because she hasn’t been able to talk to Frank in days. To herself, she can admit that, though she snaps that it’s PMS when Ellison tries to breach the subject with her.

She hasn't heard from him, and she hasn’t seen his handiwork around the city, and she is absolutely sure he is dead in a gutter.

No -- not a gutter. If the police found his body they would advertise it, most definitely. Chopped up and spread in dumpsters across New York, thrown into the bay.

“I think I’m gonna head out, Fog.”

“It’s barely eleven!” He crows, putting a hand between her shoulders like he might push her to the buffet table. “Look at all the food they have left!”

“I don’t wanna be walking home with the drunkards,” she sighs, turning to wrap him in a hug. “I’m cranky anyway.”  
He squeezes back around her middle -- Marci bought him a very nice cologne, apparently; he smells of a rich, leathered tobacco veined through with some bright, clean orange -- and pulls back looking at her as seriously as the alcohol in his system will allow.

“Let me know if you need anything, Kare.”

“Merry Christmas, Foggy.”

She hates Christmas, actually. Walking out of the warm, golden office building and into the sleet and freezing muck of the city still manages to feel too much like Vermont; more than any other time of the year.

Matt had called her, this morning. Some Yule spirit had convinced her to answer, though he clearly was expecting or hoping she wouldn’t.

“Karen? How -- hello. How are you?”

“Fine.”

Silence.

“I just wanted to...hear your voice. Tell you merry Christmas.”

“Mm.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?”

It’s a small, mean thing to ask. He won’t be able to answer that, she knows.

“...It was good to hear from you, Karen.” He says after a painful pause, obviously desperate to get off the phone.

“Don’t kill yourself, Matt.” Is all she can manage in return.

Marci was sporting a lovely emerald pendant necklace when she and Foggy had greeted her that evening, both of them gleaming in a way that was clearly post-coital and in love, and Karen hadn’t the heart to tell them about it.

She has a half a bottle of vodka and a questionable, probably moldy bottle of cranberry juice in her fridge. The rest of her night will be a quiet one, one way or another. Tomorrow she’ll have a bubble bath and stay in bed until Christmas is finally, blessedly over.

The walk up the stairs to her apartment is blissfully full of imagining how the warm water and the last dregs of her bottle of bubble bath will seep into her bones. She’s running headlong into Frank outside her door before she consciously realizes it’s him standing there.

“I could kill you,” She breathes. They’ve managed to tumble into her apartment, and she speaks into the warm, clean scent heavy at his neck, collecting in the soft hollow of his throat and the exact same as the antibacterial soap they keep in public gym showers. The bristles of his beard tickle at her face, and though she has her arms around him his remain limp at his sides.

“Where have you been?”

His left arm shifts between them, and she disentangles herself to see him holding a little crumpled gift bag.  
“Merry...Christmas.” He pauses, looking uncertainly at the carpet like it’s an oracle. “Ma’am.” He tacks on, unhelpfully.

There's a ringing in her ears as she stares at the bag dumbly. Only when his hand twitches like he’s going to retract the gift altogether does she lunge to it.

“Have you eaten?”

His shoulders relax, his face going all soft again.

“I can always eat.”

She takes the bag with her to the kitchenette. It’s not like she has stuff for a nice meal, but she should have some turkey for a sandwich.

Except she doesn't, because why would things work out?

“...Genghis Connie’s is open,” He says delicately from behind her, clearly able to see her barren refrigerator. “Do you like Chinese?”

“Please give me my phone from my bag,” she says with as much dignity as she’s able. He does so, digging through her purse as little as he can manage, and Karen loves him. It’s not her whole heart; there’s too much too tender in the softest places of her chest to allow him to plant both feet there. But it’s a big enough piece.

“Thank you,” she breathes, taking the phone from his hands, and it’s for more than one thing.

 

The plates of food are all half empty, her apartment smelling of grease and soft onions and roasted pork.

“...You gonna open your gift?”

The cranberry juice is definitely past its expiration date, sour and more pungent on her tongue than the cheap vodka mixed with it. She was desperate to, actually; had eyed it all night like it would disappear if she let it out of her sight, and Frank with it.

Karen dares to tuck her toes underneath his thigh -- barely, deniable -- when she sits back down on the sagging couch, the bag heavy with anticipation on her lap.

It’s a black satin ribbon the width of her ring finger, heavy with a silver lock pendant the size of her thumbnail.

“Oh.”

“You don’t -- I don’t know much about women’s jewelry. But I thought.”

“What?” She needs him to finish the sentence, the aching gape at her chest expanding, swelling bigger than her body.

“I thought I wanted to see you in it.”

It comes out like gnawed glass, like he forced himself to look her in the eye and say it, and to be honest.

“There's,” he clears his throat. “There’s something else in the bag.”’

Sure enough, a magazine for her pistol is beneath the thin tissue paper that had cradled the necklace. She lets out a giggle that’s more hysterical exhale than real mirth, weighing it in her hands before slipping it back in the bag and on the floor. The necklace is her center of gravity, and she's turning to face her back to him when she speaks again.

“Put it on me.”

Her heart is a hummingbird high and strong in her throat as she purposefully keeps the ribbon in her hands in her lap. She doesn’t hear the couch creak as he moves, a miracle on any other day, but feels the dip as his knees dig into it. His hand carefully does not touch her skin at all as he brushes her hair to the side to bare her throat. It burns low and deep under her skin more than if he’d just press into her. Karen can barely feel his breathing rustling at the crown of her head, flitting a soft caress at the side of her neck that she cranes into.

He’s careful still not to touch her when he reaches around to grab the necklace, but the heat of him circles her regardless, her eyes growing heavy lidded and largely unseeing.

She doesn't realize Frank has taken the necklace from her hands until she feels the cool, silky glide of it over her collarbones and around the nape of her neck. He doesn’t seem bothered by the little breathy sigh that overcomes her, so maybe she imagines letting it loose in the first place.

It’s probably not as heavy at the hollow of her throat as she makes it feel in her head, but it's enough to sink into regardless.

“Tighter,” she says when she feels him pull away.

“Karen -- ” But he does it, tightening so it’s more a choker than a necklace. More like a collar, her brain supplies ridiculously.

She nearly jumps clear out of her skin when he fits a single finger between the ribbon and her neck, tugging barely to test it’s not too tight.

“Why a lock?” She murmurs when he finally retreats to his side of the couch, turning around herself to see his honest answer. It comes like he’s ashamed of it and himself both.

“Don’t ask me that.”

It strikes her all at once that Frank is terrified of himself for her sake, out of a desire to protect her from the parts of him she wants the most. They stand nearly nose to nose and go toe to toe every time they so much as breathe near each other and he’s still afraid of hurting her -- of breaking her in a way she is absolutely sure he can’t.

His hands are rough and flayed open in parts, and it’s not because he’s incapable of hurting her, probably. She closes his fist gently, mindful of the perpetually open abrasions there, and cradles it between both of her own, long and slim and pale. It’s because she won’t let him.

Karen grabs his other hand, places it on top so the wrists form an X she can’t quite fit both her hands around, though she tries.

“Do you trust me, Frank?”

This has always been the crux of the matter. His brow pinches, face pulling tauter than she’s seen it stretched in pain while digging bits of barbed wire from high on his thigh, low on his belly. _Fucking Russians_ , he’d swore.

“With my life,” he whispers hoarsely, every word a bit of ragged, sharp steel that imbeds itself mirror to his own scars low in her gut.

Matt Murdock falls through her window, very clearly dying, and Karen has never hated another human more.

 

It’s all she can do to rid Matt of the mask and ridiculous suit -- mostly because Frank insists, otherwise she would roll him down the flight of stairs and leave him to explain the garb to the EMT that’s on its way -- her insistence, because no way would she leave Frank to stitch Matt up in her bathtub.

“I have plans for it, Frank.”

“Ma’am, his liver -- ”

“ _Plans_ , Frank.”

She takes special joy at the pained whine Matt makes as she tugs his shirt and mask off.

“Leave the pants, Frank, Christ.”

“...Protecting your virtue?” He offers, too neutrally. His eyes glitter dark but bright and she knows he is laughing at her.

“I’ll rip it off if I see it,” she snarls.

“I believe you,” and she believes that he does.

“Get his wallet if it's on him,” she says seriously.

A petite brunette with huge eyes that take up half her heart shaped face kicks her door open as Frank leaps from where he knelt over Matt’s legs to cover her, pushing her back to the wall. She velcros herself to his hunched back as he faces the interloper, while _Luke fucking Cage_ stands behind the woman walking into her apartment like she owns it.

“I hope you’re planning on paying to have that door fixed, asshole.”

“Ma’am, please,” Frank hisses over his shoulder to her, straightening slightly as they walk further into the room.

“We have a receipt for this purchase,” the woman says, kicking at Matt’s side before bodily slinging him onto her shoulder.

“You need one for my door, too?”

“ _Karen_.”

Luke Cage -- and by God, does he look even better in person than on the TV -- snorts before adjusting the bent hinges of her front door. He turns to face them with an amused, expectant twist at his mouth as he shuts and opens the door twice.

“Gotta charge him for the window, though,” he grins with a jerk of his chin to Matt’s prone body.

“And the bloodstains,” Karen confirms with a firm nod. The woman who has Matt over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes snorts.

“There’s an ambulance on its way. Handle that while you’re out there.”

Frank pinches the bridge of his nose as they cross the threshold to the hall, and Karen thinks she sees Luke give him a sympathetic look as they disappear.

“I hate him.”

“He’s not dead after all.”

“No, we aren’t so lucky.”

Frank turns to face her fully now, frowning.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“...What are you talking about?”

Karen watches the puzzle pieces click into place, Frank’s mouth a soft ‘o’ she wants to press her fingers to.  
His fingers brush the outside of her arms, one at the wall beside her, ready to bracket her in. She is ready to lean in and be done with the waiting game, her own hands already reaching for his hips to eliminate the ridiculous space between them.

“Goodnight, Karen.”

He looks guilty as sin barely rubbing at her jaw with his thumb before pressing the pad of it to the lock at her neck and bolting.

She asks him to wait, but he’s already gone.

“No, no, no.” She lunges for her phone and expects the repeated rings to voicemail, fumbling out a text instead; anything to relieve the cracking pressure under her sternum.

“It’s okay to wabt something good.”

Regret heats her cheeks and ears as soon as she sends that. She wasn’t about to beg; clears her suddenly, unbearably thick throat to silence the neediest whines insistent at the back of her skull.

“Just let me know you’re alive, whenever you can be assed to do that.” She taps out finally, tossing her phone down none too gently to clean the goddamn mess her apartment has become over the past forty-five minutes.

Her phone rings when the last of the takeout is stacked precariously in the fridge and she’s utilizing one of those wax melts from Trish, scrubbing Matt-fucking-Murdock’s blood out of her hideous mauve carpet on her hands and knees, her coffee table and couch finagled to cover the broken panes of her living room window.

Foggy leaves a two minute ode to how much he loves her, Marci, the city of New York, and the individual members of Earth, Wind, and Fire in her voicemail.

Karen very much hates Christmas.

 

Her bubble bath is the same lavender mint as the useless hand cream in her bag -- from the same set, and just as mediocre. She loves it, now; has sat in this tub until the water was cold, drained it, nibbled at the leftovers from last night, and filled it again with scalding water and repeated the cycle for hours.

It’s near dark when she finally exits the bathroom, no longer steamy but still smelling sweet and fresh and clean. She hadn’t risen from bed till after one in the afternoon, and combined with her hours reading the worn paperbacks that came with her apartment in the bath she’s been left pruny and rubbery and generally, wonderfully, languorous.

Karen hasn’t heard from Frank, but she didn’t expect to, either. Maybe she won’t again, until he’s bleeding and busting out a window in her next (hopefully nicer) apartment. That’s her life’s purpose, maybe.

But she won’t sink into moping, today.

She can’t be bothered to get dressed, laying naked and spread eagle on the unmade mess of her bed. Her skin still thrums pleasantly with the residual heat of the bath, leaving her pink and flushed; her idea of a Christmas well spent. No vigilantes, no pants, no bullshit.

The soft click from her living room rouses her from sleep, but only just. Her motivation to strain her hearing to see if it's a serial killer or a squirrel at her window only lasts about two seconds before she decides if she’s dying now, at least it will be comfortable way to go and succumbs to slumber again.

The second time she wakes, it’s as immediate as a light being blown out.

Karen has been very clearly -- if clearly hurriedly -- tucked in. The two largest bath towels in her apartment have been thrown over her enough to protect her virtue, and from the open door separating her bedroom and the living room, drifting up from the soft indigo dark, Karen hears the quiet rumbling of a man’s snores.

It’s all the willpower she can manage to make herself rise slowly from the bed, wrapping one of the towels around herself. She grabs the quilt she’d been laying on as an afterthought, still damp in places where she’d passed out on it straight from the bath, and tiptoes out of her bedroom.

The couch is still holding the coffee table up to cover the gaping window, so Frank is half-curled on himself on the floor, propped up at the little bar leading into the kitchenette.

Karen isn’t more than two or three inches shy of Frank’s height herself, but she thinks she has the motivation to fit herself in the space on his lap, to curl up and tuck herself under his chin. But he’ll spook like a horse, she knows. So she sits instead where he can see her right when he inevitably wakes up, and tosses the blanket around him as gently as she’s able, since he clearly couldn’t be bothered to take care of himself.

But she isn’t some saint, and once she settles herself she reaches out so their knuckles brush together.

“What am I going to do with you?”

Karen memorizes the lines and slopes and pits of his face between drowsing. She’s got a crick in her neck within the first fifteen minutes, and a greater appreciation for each of his dark eyelashes.

“I didn't mean to wake you up,” he grumbles an hour or so later. He wakes like it's painful, all screwed shut eyes and deep frown.

“You didn’t.”

Before she chickens out, she rubs her thumb on the furrow of his brow, tracing above the socket, nearly down to the top of his cheek from his temple before pulling away.

“Necklace.” He mutters, wholly incoherent -- that coffee must really be more medicinal than she originally thought -- before grabbing towards her neck. She can’t do a repeat of yesterday; even as she tilts her head back to allow more of his hand to rest on her throat.

“If I touch you, will you run?”

“...If I think about it, probably.”

“So that’s a no to moving on the bed.”

“That’s a no, ma’am.”

Karen nods, turning around to nestle back into his front before he can make a mad dash or change his mind. She’ll take what she can get, just for now. Her towel has slipped, but neither of them mention the press of her bare rear to the warm, rough denim of his jeans or the brief, tightened grip at her waist in response.

The weight of him at her back, then slinging a slow leg over one of her own, is maybe the only thing she has been able to call exquisite or perfect in her life.

“...What are you laughing at?”

“I was thinking I might be a bit of a drama queen.”

Frank wisely doesn’t reply.

 

It’s not every night since then that Frank comes over and allows himself a few hours reprieve just to lay together -- sometimes not even touching. Karen is getting better at telling what kind of day he’s having without having to look at him too long or hard, which makes him nervous or pisses him off or else something she’ll have to pay for later.

Now, nearly February and a wonderfully lazy Sunday afternoon, she brushes the tip of her index finger down the wide bridge of his nose again and again as they lay facing each other (in the bed, thankfully, today. Her back couldn’t take much more of the floor, the lumpy couch, once on the roof of the building), entranced with the soft movement under his eyelids as she does it.

“Tell me about Fisk.”

His eyes fly open, and she retracts her hand from his face to wrap around the pendant at her neck.

“Why.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

They’ve had an actually very good day today, she won’t risk it for Wilson Fisk or the dream she’d had last night. Over buckets of fried chicken and some asshole microbrew he’d brought over, they’d binged on the Food Network of all things. He’d let himself place his head in her lap for a while, sighing contentedly as she’d carded her fingers through his hair and joked about Viking-braiding his beard.

“Can I try something with you, ma’am?”

He’s moved almost imperceptibly closer to her on the bed -- miles in Frank Castle terms -- and she feels herself balance on this precipice with him, ready to see it through to the end.

“Yes.”

“I’m...it’s taken me a while to convince myself that this isn’t unfair.”

He probably has more to say about that; he tends to always have speeches planned ahead of time that he gives up on halfway through, but the press of his mouth onto hers is firm and warm and blindingly, blissfully, _good_ , and she’s glad he’s shelved the talking for now, for once.

She wants to surge forward, a leg over his waist -- her hands tangled in his hair, mouths red and sloppy. But Karen knows better, she thinks; lets him lead just for now because he needs to. And maybe patience won’t kill her, just this once. She reconsiders when he catches her bottom lip between his teeth before pulling away. His eyes are blown wide and black, color high on his face, lips shiny and open.

“Sorry, what was that you wanted to try?” She breathes, mesmerized by the little twitch at the corner of his swelling mouth before he leans in again, keeping her eyes open at the next kiss as long as she can to memorize the shy want and tenderness on his face. He half leans over her, the warm solid promise of his body keeping her flat to the mattress, willing to sink into the weight of it even as she wants to arch forward in a challenge.

When he pulls back this time, Karen feels some finality in it and tries to not be disappointed.

“Thank you.”

The soft ache in her chest cracks open, and she cradles his face in her hands. Karen forces him to look down his nose at her, straight in the eyes -- if she also hooks one of her legs over his to keep him balanced on top of her a few minutes longer, that’s between her and god. She’s got to choose her next words carefully.

“I think sometimes. That you make sense.”

Frank snorts above her, a sharp little grin on his face. She rolls her eyes, tracing at both sides of his jaw with her thumbs. It’s oddly soft, by facial hair standards, though still enough, she reckons, to burn pink between --

“I mean, you are the only thing that makes sense. Nothing but you makes sense.”

He nuzzles into her neck as she finishes, breathing shakily against the sensitive skin there. He’s speaking, but pressed so close the words are understood more from the vibrations at her throat than the sound of them. But she knew what he was going to say, anyway.

He makes a litany of them, a rosary kiss between each proclamation, down one side of the column of her throat, across the band of his necklace, and up the other side again.

_I’m sorry, I love you, thank you, I love you, I love you._

 

Frank is a live gun in her hands, running electric under her skin like Wesley was in front of her now, smoke acrid and sharp in her nose, copper blooming underneath -- like now, his bottom lip between her teeth, her hands claws at his shoulders, his chest. She’s glad for her height now more than usual, able to plant both knees around his broad middle comfortably, still able to stretch up and suck bruises into the sensitive space behind his ear, still able to keep both of his hands splayed out on either side of him by the unforgiving press of her own at his thick wrists. Her hips roll firm and slow over the hot, hard length of him. She’d kept his jeans on him just for this, in reality; had come like this before with others, the drag of rough denim through the thin slip of her underwear or the bare skin at her cunt proof of the existence of a loving, merciful god, as far as Karen was concerned.

Shucking off her own dress and his shirt had been priority number one when she’d rolled herself on top of him. (Running her nails and tongue down the taut, ribbed planes of his chest and stomach, groaning into the coarse hair leading down into the waistband of his jeans after doing so had been priority 1.5). She’d allowed him to sit up and weigh the globes of her breasts reverently after -- because fair is fair -- his mouth unbearably hot and soft around them, nibbling and sucking little bruises to the undersides of both -- which was much more than fair, much closer to a kind of worship she’d only read about in pulp novels -- before pushing him back down, not wanting to get too close too fast.

Karen has to release his wrists after her grinding has white heat curling sharp and insistent low in her belly. Fuck, but she hopes this isn’t the only time he’ll allow her this so they can go at it properly, eventually. She leans forward, a hand beside his head, to try and yank her panties off. Because he’s a gentleman, he latches onto a pebbled nipple with his teeth where it sways above his face now, reaching with his newly freed hands -- rough and square and wonderfully massive -- to stroke down her back and sides, gripping her rear, before helping her remove them.

“Pants -- pants,” she huffs, willing them to disappear of their own accord so she can lavish in the attention to her chest a bit longer. He makes a sloppy trail between her breasts upward, one hand holding her steady splayed across her hip, the other brushing at her thigh on a clear path upward.

His lips are warm to the hollow of her throat around the cool metal of the pendant, both flush against her skin now. It’s like pressing the fast forward button, leaving her suddenly too desperate to wait any longer, and she disentangles herself enough to crawl down to his waist. She manages to get the pants halfway down his thighs before she can’t resist mouthing at the wet smear on his underwear, making him jackknife half off the bed with a howl, a hand knotted in her hair. He almost knees her in the face in the final struggle to kick them both off, and he intercepts her when she goes to sink down flush against him.

She is ready, she has been ready for months, but if he needs to make sure now she’ll allow the broad sweep of his thumb circling her clit, her thighs trembling when he slowly sinks a finger, then two, into her. His thick cock is flushed so rosy it’s nearly purple, but he’s still slow and methodic, passing over the spongy ridge that makes her keen repeatedly once he finds it before adding a third digit. Her breath hitches and she knows she’s about to tumble off that ledge and begs him to stop, pulling out of his reach and keeping him planted flat to the bed with a hand to his chest.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, looking up at her like he’s never seen her before.

Karen, still seeing stars and likely permanently cross eyed, wiggles upward to line herself up, muttering, “You’re telling me, pal.”

He watches her as he pops two of his fingers in his mouth -- quickly, not the way she’s done it when making a show licking off someone’s release -- and it’s all the more erotic for it, that he’d not done it for her benefit but for his own.

She sinks down on him fully with a soundless scream, her mind a blissful mantra of _yesFrankFrankyesFrank_.

“Ma’am -- please.” He chokes out underneath her, hands flexing inches from her hips like he’s stopping himself from biting into them. Unacceptable. She places them firmly at her sides, holding them there under her own as she finds a rhythm. It’s the millionth time she’s been grateful for how expressive his face is, able to see what he likes best laid out clearly beneath her.

As her pace becomes more erratic he leans up again to press his lips against the lock at her throat, one hand pulling her down by a grip at her hair. When he pulls away, Karen is at a loss to reciprocate something both so fervent and possessive, reaching to place her hand open and flat at the base of his throat -- where her pendant would be if he had one. She’s careful move as slow as she can in case he wants to move away, but when his eyes flutter shut and his hips underneath her start rolling with less control she barely squeezes, taking as much of his throat in her grip as she can manage.

Her other hand caresses up his chest and sweeps his collarbone before squeezing as well, allowing her to lean in for a kiss as both his hands at her rear help her keep pace with him below.

They’re as sloppy as teenagers; all eagerness and no finesse, and they finish just as messily as well. The warmth of his release inside her and his broken off groan are more than she can stand and her own takes her like she’s being split in half.

It’s normally unpleasant, the feeling of cooling spend dripping slick between her thighs. But as she lets Frank roll out from underneath her, tucking her under his chin with a leg over her waist (like she would honestly think about leaving now), she can forget the strangeness and let herself submit to the cozy afterglow. She wiggles a hand between them, and as he traces the line of her spine with careful, light fingers, she uses her own to map out little shapes in the hollow of his throat, still damp with sweat.

“You make sense too, Karen Page.”

She replaces her fingers with a press of her smiling lips high on his chest.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Merry early Christmas, Xan :-*
> 
> File Under: things I did while I should have been working on NaNoWriMo.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://violetteacup.tumblr.com), if you're so inclined. 
> 
> Feedback always appreciated :) Thanks for reading!


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